Lovers of Philosophy: How the Intimate Lives of Seven Philosophers Shaped Modern Thought

By Warren Ward

They were Europe's greatest thinkers, but what were they like at love?

Lovers of Philosophy explores the love lives of seven philosophers, and how their most intimate experiences came to shape their ideas. In these pages, the reader learns about the significance of Kant's infatuation, Hegel's premarital liaisons, Nietzsche's heartbreak, Heidegger's hypocrisy, Sartre's promiscuous polyamory, Foucault's sexual liberation, and Derrida's dalliances in extramarital desire.

The stories of these philosophers' love lives are told against a backdrop of Europe undergoing tumultuous change. Beginning in the eighteenth-century Prussian Enlightenment, the book traverses the French Revolution, Napoleonic wars, Industrial Revolution, two World Wars, and events of May 1968 before arriving at the culture wars of the late twentieth century.

For anyone who has struggled to understand continental philosophy's vast array of movements, from German idealism through to phenomenology, existentialism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism, Lovers of Philosophy also provides the reader with an easy-to-follow overview of the progression of ideas from Kant to Derrida.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ockham Publishing
• Release date: Jun 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781839191534

Warren Ward

I am a first time Author, the Quests of Clyde McCall is my first book and my first children's book. I am of Canadian-Guyanese background. Educated at the University of Ottawa. I am currently a professional basketball player, traveling the world. I wrote this book to share some of the life lessons I learned through the game like friendship, hard work, and dedication. Special thanks to Jermaine Baylis for his illustrations and bringing these characters to life. Also to Pastor Paul Riley who literally made me pursue something bigger than myself.Carpe Diem.

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lovers

of

philosophy

how the intimate lives of seven philosophers shaped modern thought

Warren Ward

Copyright © Warren Ward 2022

The author’s moral rights have been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisher.

Published in 2022 by Ockham Publishing in the United Kingdom

ISBN 978-1-83919-153-4

Cover illustrations Bella Tobin

www.ockham-publishing.com

To Ross Smith, for philosophy

To Zoe Walsh, for love

About the Author

Warren Ward is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Queensland. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Aeon, New Philosopher, Prairie Fire, and Overland. He won the New Philosopher Writers’ Award in 2016 and 2019. In 2020 he was awarded a Denis Diderot Artist-in-Residence Grant at the Chateau Orquevaux.

Acknowledgements

The idea for this book came to me in a flash in Ev’s consulting room and I am forever grateful to her for that. After rushing home and scribbling out the first few pages, Zoe-Anne Walsh encouraged me to continue. None of this would have happened, however, without the many preceding years of patient tutelage in continental philosophy from Ross Smith.

I might have given up if it weren’t for the steady and skilful support of Krissy Kneen. And Fiona Reilly, who helped me nurse this baby from its youngest days to its final manifestation as a fully-grown book.

I am indebted to Martin Beckmann for introducing me to the Heidegger family, and to Hermann, Jutta, and Arnulf Heidegger, for so graciously inviting me into their home in Freiburg. Thanks to Lydia Rusch for translating this interview into English.

Many people encouraged me throughout this project’s long gestation and/or provided feedback on earlier drafts: Ruth Gough, Derek Baines, Chris Neild, Barbara Buderus, Meg Vann, Sophie Hamley, Vanessa Radnidge, Peter Watson, Alexandra Payne, Rose Michael, Henry Rosenbloom, Fiona Stager, Edwina Shaw, Rachel Crawford, Matt Condon, Kári Gíslason, Nigel Featherstone, Nadine Davidoff, Martin Shaw, Damon Young, Mary Cunnane, and all the wonderful members of my writing critique group, Dead Darlings Society.

Thanks to Zan Boag and the team at New Philosopher for encouraging my early development as a writer with awards and commissioned pieces.

The following organisations have provided invaluable feedback and/or support throughout the life of this project: Queensland Writers Centre, Avid Reader, Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship, Australian Association of Group Psychotherapy, RANZCP Special Interest Group in Philosophy, Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre, Château d’Orquevaux, Varuna, Australian Society of Authors, Disquiet International Literary Program, Yale Writers’ Conference, Vermont Studio Center, Arteles, and Can Serrat.

I’d especially like to thank the organisers and participants of the QWC/Hachette Manuscript Development Program, as well as the ACT Writers Centre HARDCOPY Program funded by the Australia Council.

Thanks to my fellow lovers of philosophy, Ann Webster-Wright and Rossven Naidoo, for all the inspiring discussions.

My eternal gratitude to Zoe, and to Alexandra and Dominique Ward, who put up with years of me beavering away in that office, only to be greeted by faraway and quizzical looks whenever they asked me anything about the real world.

I’d also like to express my appreciation to Robert Johnson and Sarah Hembrow of Ockham Publishing, who believed in this book from the beginning, and for their gracious and thoughtful editorial oversight. Also, a big thank you to Bella Tobin for the cover design illustrations, and to Matt Tobin for his expert input.

Finally, I’d like to thank the philosophers whose work and lives provided the material for this book, especially Simone de Beauvoir who first opened my eyes to the idea of philosopher as lover.

Contents

Introduction      1

Chapter 1      3

Kant and the Countess

Chapter 2      29

Hegel: Domestic Dialectic

Chapter 3      73

Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human

Chapter 4      123

Heidegger: Being and Loving

Chapter 5      166

Sartre: She Came to Stay

Chapter 6      226

Foucault: A History of Sexuality

Chapter 7      277

Derrida’s Desires

Epilogue      309

Bibliography      313

Notes and References      324

Introduction

Although long interested in philosophy, I have often felt daunted by its classic texts. Being and Time. Being and Nothingness. Critique of Pure Reason. Thus Spake Zarathustra. Each title has stood like a frowning marble bust, staring me down, mocking my efforts to understand the genius within. I know I am not alone in finding some of these works difficult to decipher, a barrier rather than a gateway into the vast, bewildering world of philosophical discourse.

Fortunately for me, I came across an easier entry point early in my reading: the novels of Sartre and Beauvoir. Sartre’s first novel, Nausea, showed me rather than told me what existentialism was. I experienced, through its protagonist Roquentin, what it was like to live in a world without meaning, to be confronted by the cold, hard indifference of existence. Later, in Sartre’s Roads to Freedom trilogy, I was exposed to the ways that different characters try to tackle the conundrum of freedom in a godless world that doesn’t care. 

But it was Beauvoir’s first novel, She Came to Stay, that turned philosophy from an intellectual curiosity into a burning passion for me. I was mesmerized by Beauvoir’s account of the ménage à trois between her, Sartre, and their nineteen-year-old student Olga Kosakiewicz. Sartre’s slow but inevitable seduction of this young woman challenged Beauvoir’s efforts to stay true to her existentialist ideal of free love, agreed to in a pact with Sartre a few years earlier.

By describing Sartre with all his flaws and foibles laid bare, Beauvoir opened my eyes to the fact he was, above all else, a man. She Came to Stay brought the philosopher down from the pedestal on which I had placed him to a position where I could see him as a lover. An imperfect human being. Just like me.

After that, the world of philosophy didn’t seem so daunting.

For several years, inspired by the examples of Sartre’s and Beauvoir’s novels, I have tried to find out as much as I can about the romantic lives of other philosophers. The lasting partnership of Sartre and Beauvoir led me to explore other crucial couplings in philosophy – Heidegger and Arendt, Nietzsche and Salomé, Kant and Keyserlingk, Hegel and Burkhardt, Derrida and Agacinski, Foucault and Defert.

In my efforts to uncover the intimate secrets of the continent’s greatest thinkers, I have travelled to Europe several times. I have patronised cafés these thinkers pondered in, peered into the houses in which they lived, and visited the cemeteries where they were laid to rest. I have trawled through mountains of letters, interviews, and other biographical material. My explorations led me to some unexpected places, such as the living room of Martin Heidegger’s ninety-three-year-old son in Freiburg, where I asked him about his parents’ infidelities, his memories of family life, and the vexed question of his father’s association with Nazism.

During these explorations, I have done what comes naturally to me in my daily work as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. I have looked for connections between these philosophers’ experiences of intimacy and the way they came to see the world. The overall structure of the book, exploring the lives and ideas of seven philosophers in chronological order, also provides the reader with an easy-to-follow overview of the progression of ideas in continental philosophy.

The following pages present, for the first time, the psychoanalytic and philosophical significance of Kant’s infatuations, Hegel’s premarital liaisons, Nietzsche’s heartbreak, Heidegger’s hypocrisy, Sartre’s experiments in promiscuous polyamory, Foucault’s exploration of gay liberation, and Derrida’s dalliances in extramarital desire.

Chapter 1

Kant and the Countess

The Graduate

On a clear, blue-skied summer’s day in 1753, a twenty-eight-year-old unemployed philosophy graduate called Immanuel Kant arrived by horse and buggy at the grounds of the famous Keyserlingk Palace. He was there to apply for a position as family tutor for the Keyserlingks’ two young children. Kant’s potential new employer had arranged for a driver to collect him at his modest cottage in the centre of Königsberg and bring him to the palace, a few miles outside the city.

This was Kant’s first time outside the city gates; he had not previously met the twenty-five-year-old Countess Caroline von Keyserlingk who was about to interview him. But he had, like others in the town, heard the descriptions of her as ‘beautiful, intellectually agile and artistically creative’.¹ He was also aware of rumours that she had a passionate interest in philosophy.

Kant was in desperate need of employment at this time. His beloved father, a harness-maker, had died a few years earlier, leaving the family destitute. As the oldest male, it had been Kant’s duty to bury his father in the Königsberg cemetery, alongside his mother who had died nine years earlier.

Kant’s circumstances had, since then, become increasingly dire as he looked for work to support himself and his siblings. Positions for philosophy graduates were hard to come by, so he sought a job as a Hofmeister, a private family tutor. Such employment did not carry a very high social standing or many prospects for career advancement, but it could at least bring some much-needed income. After a couple of short-lived and unsatisfactory appointments, Kant jumped at this opportunity to work for Königsberg’s leading noble family.

As his buggy pulled into the driveway, Kant was greeted by a large green garden in the French style, backgrounded by a sprawling baroque palace. This son of a humble artisan, only recently graduated from university, felt immediately out of place in this sumptuously decorated setting.

But Kant was not only offered the position, he soon became a close confidante of the Countess. Classically educated, Caroline von Keyserlingk had a good working knowledge of both classical and contemporary philosophy. At the time Kant met her, she was translating a work by the German philosopher Johann Gottsched into French.

Keyserlingk had been married since the age of fifteen to the Count, thirty years her senior. At sixteen, she gave birth to her first son. Her second came a year later. Her two children were now at the age, eight and nine, where they could benefit from a family tutor. But the Countess insisted, on offering the handsome new tutor the position, that he regularly put time aside to engage with her in philosophical debate.

The Countess

The Countess had long-standing interests in not only philosophy, but in literature, music, and the arts. She was a proficient lutenist, and arranged for her sons to have singing lessons from a very young age. She was enamoured of all things French; she spoke the language fluently, and the palace’s furnishings and decorations reflected the latest styles from Paris, as did her wardrobe. Unfortunately for the Countess, her cultural and intellectual interests were not shared by her husband, nor, for that matter, by anyone else in the court. She was delighted, therefore, when the learned young Kant joined her court, and arranged for him to attend the palace as often as possible.

We do not know if the Count had any concerns about the new tutor’s repeated visits upon his wife. Gossip had, however, already begun to circulate in the palace corridors. As one observer of the Countess noted:

The young beauty was passionately interested in philosophy; rumour had it that she was no less interested in the visiting philosopher.²

A Harness-Maker’s Son

The Countess soon learned that her new employee had an upbringing vastly different to hers.

Born in 1724, Kant had spent his whole life in Königsberg, a small, windswept city on Prussia’s Baltic coast. Königsberg was not a centre of political or academic importance like Berlin or Halle, but it was close enough to these cities to keep in touch with the ideas of the day. And its location on the Baltic navigation routes meant its citizens were regularly exposed to the goods and services, but also the ideas, of the English and Dutch.

Kant’s father, Johann, whose descendants had emigrated from Scotland several generations earlier, was a bridle-maker of modest means, but highly respected within his community. He and his wife, Anna Regina, had nine children, with four dying before reaching maturity. Immanuel was the fourth-born child, and the oldest surviving son.

Kant’s early world was one of horses, carriages, and harness-making. He spent his childhood in a part of the city the Countess had never set foot in, where the city’s master craftsmen all lived and worked. His childhood neighbourhood bustled day and night with the sounds and smells of saddlers, harness-makers, tanners, and blacksmiths.

While the Countess’s early years were populated with servants, tutors, music, and manicured gardens, Kant’s were suffused with the smells of hay, manure, and leather. In Königsberg’s wet, cold, and windy winters these ever-present aromas blended with the homely scents of woodfire, ash, and rainwater. Every morning, the young Kant woke to the sounds of neighing horses, cracking whips, and craftsmen hard at work.

On Sundays the Kant family, like everyone else in their community, proceeded to church, the main event of the day. The Kants belonged to the Pietist faith, and their churches, like those of their Lutheran forebears, were spare, stark, and simple, free of the iconography of the Roman Catholic houses of worship they distinguished themselves from. These were the only mornings that Königsberg’s streets were empty, apart from worshipping women in bonnets and long dresses and men in hats, wigs, stockings, and tunics, all making their way to the Sunday service as church bells rang out.

Although Kant’s parents weren’t overly strict in their religious beliefs, they did pass on to their son, mainly through their own example, the Pietist values of humility, thrift, hard work, and self-sacrifice. Such an upbringing instilled in Kant a discipline and dedication that would stand him in good stead when he later embarked on tackling the thorniest philosophical problems of his day.

Kant’s parents had been forward-thinking enough to send their son, who had shown academic promise from a young age, to a Pietist school from the age of eight, where he received a schooling in the classics until his mid-teens.

Kant’s mother, however, would not live to see the results of her foresight. When Kant was only thirteen years old, she died in tragic circumstances.

Having already endured the loss of four children of her own, Anna Kant became very distressed on learning that her dearest friend was at risk of dying from scarlet fever. Taking it upon herself to nurse her friend, she encouraged her to take her medicine by sipping some herself. Immediately afterwards, she realised with horror she had exposed herself to the deadly fever. Her friend died after many tortured hours of painful delirium, followed a few days later by Anna herself.

Despite the trauma of being left alone at age thirteen with his father and siblings, Kant managed, with his father’s generous help, to enrol at the age of sixteen at Königsberg University, where he would graduate with a degree in philosophy six years later.

Magister

After being hired by Countess Keyserlingk, Kant accustomed himself surprisingly quickly to palace life. He worked hard to familiarise himself with the ways of society, an effort that would not only bring him closer to the Countess, but also accelerate his trajectory to becoming a respected and renowned man of letters.

In 1754 the twenty-nine-year-old Kant started spending days he wasn’t required at the palace at his old alma mater, Königsberg University. Perhaps his return to formal study was inspired by the philosophical interests of his beguiling new employer. In any case, he spent an increasing amount of time in the institution’s libraries immersing himself in texts on philosophy and a wide range of other subjects. As a contemporary observed, ‘he collected in his miscellanies from all the parts of human knowledge, all that somehow seemed useful to him’.³

He also started writing, and published a couple of minor papers in a local journal.

In 1755 Kant completed his master’s thesis and was awarded the title of Magister. At this point he stopped working for the Keyserlingks, but continued, at the Countess’s insistence, to regularly visit her at the palace.

Portrait

When Kant turned thirty, the Countess asked if she could draw his portrait.

The Countess had, by this time, become an artist of considerable repute. Her watercolour paintings and pencil drawings, mainly historical scenes and portraits, were already held in high regard throughout Prussia. (In later years, her artistic achievements would be acknowledged with an honorary membership of the Royal Prussian Academy of the Arts.)

Although the Countess sketched and painted many dignitaries and other persons of import who visited the palace, her portrait of Kant is the only work that survives to this day. Her rendering of Kant provides us with a glimpse of her feelings towards the young philosopher at this time.

She represents him, in fact, in a most flattering light with fine, handsome features, elegantly dressed in cape and wig. The Kant she sees has gentle eyes, a high noble forehead, and soft, youthful face.

What this head-and-shoulders drawing of Kant doesn’t show is how short the young scholar was. At five-foot-two, he would have struggled to stand face to face with the elegant, dark-haired noblewoman who was sketching him. Kant was quite self-conscious about his height, as he was about another imperfection – a caved-in chest that he believed made him prone to the many respiratory allergies he suffered from. (He was known to sneeze every time he came into contact with newsprint.) The fastidious philosopher was, in fact, plagued by numerous hypochondriacal concerns throughout his life. In later years, he would regularly embarrass his friends by repeatedly expressing concerns about the regularity of his bowel.

Despite these temperamental peculiarities, Kant became highly successful during these years in refashioning himself as an elegant Magister who could comfortably mix in society’s highest circles. He started to dress in the Rococo style, a look imported from Paris, much to the delight of his Francophile Countess. His gold-trimmed coats and ceremonial swords provided a refreshing contrast to the sombre blacks and greys worn by most dignitaries at the palace.

With his slight stature, Kant had to rely heavily on his intelligence and natural charisma to engage and entertain the Countess. As a visitor to the palace observed, he certainly possessed notable gifts in this regard:

In societal conversation he could at times clothe even the most abstract ideas in lovely dress, and he analysed clearly every view that he put forward. Beautiful wit was at his command, and sometimes his speech was spiced with a light satire, which he always expressed with the driest demeanour.⁴

Although the Countess’s drawing suggests she was somewhat enamoured with the young Magister’s blonde hair, fair complexion, and searching eyes, she wasn’t the only one to be captivated by Kant’s physiognomy. Another contemporary noted that although ‘the colour of his face [was] fresh, and his cheeks showed…a healthy blush’, it was the philosopher’s eyes, the window to his clear-sighted mind, that struck one the most:

Where do I take the words to describe to you his eye! Kant’s eye was as if it had been formed of heavenly ether from which the deep look of his mind, whose fiery beam was occluded by a light cloud, visibly shone forth.⁵

The Countess’s beauty and class, however, far outshone Kant’s, and he would have felt most honoured that she had deigned to draw his portrait. A drawing of the Count and Countess at around this time reveals her as a dark-haired woman of natural beauty, wearing an open-necked dress with simple adornments. The soft youthfulness of her intelligent, pretty, open face provides an unsettling and somewhat incongruous contrast, in this picture, to the wizened and distant visage of her much older husband standing by her side.

Upwardly mobile

In the years following the drawing of this portrait, Kant’s reputation as a brilliant and engaging lecturer at Königsberg University grew rapidly. This was despite the fact he had only secured an appointment as a Privatdozent, an unsalaried lecturer with private fee-paying students his only source of income. During these years, Kant continued to be a regular guest at Keyserlingk Palace.

The Countess hosted musical recitals in which she sang and accompanied herself on the lute. Kant was always high on the guest list of these celebrated occasions.

In 1758 this pleasant state of affairs – with Kant rising through the ranks both at university and in Königsberg society – appeared as though it might be disrupted. Prussia was invaded by the Russians, who immediately took control of all Königsberg’s institutions.

The Russian occupation turned out, however, to have a benign, and even beneficial, effect on the city. The Russians brought with them an outlook that was considerably more cosmopolitan and cultured than that of the parochial and inward-looking locals. The invaders were interested in all things French. Their officers spoke the language fluently and were connoisseurs of caviar, champagne, and the latest Paris fashions. As a result, they soon became positively disposed to Countess Keyserlingk and her court, including the upwardly mobile Kant.

When the Keyserlingks first heard that an invasion was imminent, they moved to one of their country residences further out from the city. This precaution, however, proved unnecessary. The coup turned out to be bloodless and uneventful, with the Russian military leaders more interested in attending the Countess’s galas and complimenting her on her beauty, taste, and knowledge, than in carrying out any acts of aggression.

The occupation changed Königsberg society in many positive ways, enlivening it and softening the difference between the classes. There was also a dramatic increase in the number of garden parties and other events, many of these hosted by the Countess.

Kant’s philosophical teachings were in great demand with the Russian officers; they swelled the numbers attending his already popular lectures, and paid handsomely for private tutorials with the up-and-coming philosopher.

In 1761, with the Russians still in Prussia, the Count died suddenly at the age of sixty-two, leaving Caroline Keyserlingk a widow at the age of thirty-three. By this time, Kant had started describing the Countess to his friends as the ‘ideal’ of a woman, the sort of woman he would like to marry.⁶ Whatever thoughts he entertained in this regard, however, he knew that such a possibility was unthinkable, given the yawning chasm in class between him and his beloved. While he watched from afar, a long list of respectable suitors presented themselves, including the commanding general of the Russian army.

Arrangements were soon made for the Countess to be remarried to the Count’s nephew, a man with whom she would endure another long and loveless marriage.

Soon after this wedding, in 1762, the Russian occupation ended. 

The Countess’s second marriage did not stop Kant from continuing to visit her. At the lavish balls and garden parties she continued to host, the Countess unfailingly had Kant seated, as her favourite guest, in a place of honour to her right. The Countess insisted on this arrangement to ensure that when the conversation became dull, as it often did at such palace events, she had her learned friend at her side to talk about philosophy and other topics dear to both their hearts.

Midlife Crisis

Despite being brought up with a strong work ethic, and now socially connected well beyond his expectations, Kant’s career came to an impasse in his late thirties. He had written nothing since achieving his Magister’s degree, and although he still had a good reputation as a teacher, he was only receiving a sporadic income.

His previously well-disciplined life began to unravel as he found himself whiling away more and more time in billiard halls, card-playing dens, and other places of dubious repute.

It wasn’t just Kant’s career that was getting nowhere. As a result of his patchy academic achievements and lack of secure income, his marriage prospects were becoming increasingly slim.

During these years, encouraged by friends and associates, he did make a few half-hearted attempts at finding a wife. But the opportunities that presented themselves to him all paled in comparison to the ‘ideal’ of a woman he admired from afar.⁷

The few prospects that did come Kant’s way all presented themselves when he was in his late thirties and early forties.

According to one of Kant’s biographers, there was ‘a well brought up and beautiful widow’ who regularly came to Königsberg ‘and visited relatives’.⁸ From all reports she was quite beautiful, and Kant was interested in her, but the fastidious philosopher procrastinated, ‘calculat[ing] income and expenses and delayed the decision from one day to the next’.⁹ She eventually married someone else.

Kant was also interested in a young girl from Westphalia who visited Königsberg in the company of a noblewoman. Kant was ‘pleased to be with her in society, and he let this be known often’.¹⁰ He seriously considered an offer of marriage, but she left and returned to Westphalia before he could come to a definite decision.

There is no doubt that Kant had the ability to touch a woman’s heart, as evidenced by the letters he exchanged with another woman called Charlotte Amalie of Klingspor. In 1772 she wrote to Kant, remembering him long after they had met back in the 1750s. Charlotte had to move town soon after meeting him, but continued to write for several years, saying in her letters how she felt certain he was still her friend ‘just as [he was] then’.¹¹ In one piece of correspondence, rendered in long beautiful ink-strokes, she assured Kant she had benefitted from his ‘benevolent instruction’ that ‘in philosophy truth is everything and that a philosopher has pure faith’.¹² She thanked him for sending her a poem years earlier, and for educating her as a young woman with his pleasant conversation.

Towards the end of this period, there was also a woman called Maria Charlotta Jacobi who tried her utmost to seduce him. In the early 1760s this confident and extraordinarily beautiful twenty-two-year-old was the most revered socialite in all of Königsberg. She made it unmistakably clear to Kant that she was interested in him, inviting him to join her in a box at the theatre, and other society events, on many occasions.

As a member of the bourgeoisie, Maria Charlotta was much closer than the Countess to Kant’s station in life, and therefore a realistic marriage prospect. She was also well-endowed financially. There was only one problem – she was already married. This was not an obstacle as far as she was concerned, but the sense of decency and propriety that had been part of Kant’s make-up ever since his early Pietist upbringing meant there was little chance of him responding to her advances.

Maria Charlotta was married at fifteen to a man twenty-two years her senior as part of an arrangement between both parents to secure a business contract. There had never been much love or affection in the marriage, and for years Maria Charlotta, known as ‘the queen of balls and parties in Königsberg’, had made no secret of the fact she was interested in other men.¹³ The strength of her attachment to Kant is underlined in a letter she sent him when recovering from an eye operation in Berlin, in which she scolds him for failing to come and collect her.

Earlier in her efforts to win Kant’s heart, just after she first met him, the young socialite wrote him a teasing letter:

Dear friend: Aren’t you surprised that I am undertaking to write to you as a great philosopher? I believed to find you yesterday in my garden, but since…I sneaked through all the avenues and could not find you…, I busied myself with making you a band for a sword, which is dedicated to you.¹⁴

In the same correspondence she brazenly suggests a rendezvous with the Königsberg bachelor:

I lay claim to your society tomorrow afternoon. Yes, yes, I will be there, I hear you say. Good then, I will expect you, and then my clock will be wound as well…I send to you a kiss by sympathy.¹⁵

There seems little doubt from these letters that the ravishing young Maria, at the time fifteen years younger than Kant, was his if he so desired her.

Maria was not a patient woman, however. She soon tired of waiting for the scrupulous philosopher to make up his mind, and within a short period of time left town with the master of the Königsberg mint, Johann Gröschen, creating a furor that set the tongues of Königsberg wagging for years.

Perhaps as a result of these dramatic and difficult events, Kant soon afterwards